Turning tables
by Pianoninja
Summary: On a night out Rachel experiences the other side of the criminals she has to face every day. Will her best friend and colleague be able to help her?


**Hello my lovelies! I'm so sorry that it's been like an age and a day since my last S&B fic. Alevels are killing me and the Holby plot bunnies just keep bouncing! **

**Anyway, this fic is pretty tense and it's based around a very taboo issue. So, I hope you enjoy and I hope I've done it justice. By the way, I have no idea where this idea came from. **

**P.s. Obvious really but just in case; ****_Italics _****are ****_Flashback scenes. _**

Janet;

I've just got into work and to my utter surprise Rachel is already here, which is strange because I'm sure her car wasn't outside. She's sitting at her desk with her legs crossed just staring at her hands as she picks her fingernails.

"Rach?" I query, picking up that something's not quite right. She's startled when she hears me call her name and I shoot her a confused and worried look.

"Oh..sorry" she mumbles back. Then Jill comes round the corner,

"Meeting room now guys, they've just picked one up" she orders all of us. I'm still watching Rachel out of the corner of my eye and I notice her wince in pain and bring a hand to her side as she stands up. At that point all sorts of alarm bells are going off in my head as I jump in front of her,

"Rachel, are you alright?" She looks back at me with those big brown eyes and I can see the exhaustion in her face, I can tell there's something on her mind and she wants to tell me.

"I...It's nothing" she dismisses it as she dodges past me and dives into the meeting room.

Rachel;

We're in the meeting room after Jill has summoned us in. It's really hot and crowded with the entire office stuffed into the tiny box room and Janet, who's sat next to me, keeps watching me out of the corner of her eye. I'm desperately trying to focus on what Jill is saying to us all but I'm barely picking out words.

"She was violently raped and murdered between nine and eleven last night. A dog walker passing by found her this morning and dialled three nines" she announces so matter of factly. It's become normality for us now, every few weeks there's another poor girl scared witless and traumatised by some pig-headed bloke. That's if she survives it. Nine times out of ten we deal with the messy consequences of a psycopath and a girl on a night out. Another young life lost but it's all in a days work for us. I could swear it's getting warmer in here, I can feel my face flushing and Janet is looking more and more concerned. My vision starts to blur and it's impossible to concentrate.

_I'm walking down a dark and narrow street, purely because I've had to park my car a million miles away from the pub due to the bloody floods. It's freezing and I feel a droplet of rain land strikingly on my cheek. Just my luck, it would start raining when I'm in the middle of fucking Yorkshire in the sluttiest outfit I own, with just about no idea where the hell I parked. I dive into my pocket and locate my phone. No signal, obviously. I decide to stand still for a moment and take a look around with the fading light from my mobile screen. I can make out a figure in the distance, a man I think, and he seems to be looking straight in my direction. _

It's only when I notice Janet staring straight on at me that I realise how quickly I'm breathing, I feel like my heart is about to leap out of my chest and head's starting to feel extremely fuzzy from the lack of oxygen.

"Rach?" she whispers in my direction. I'm panicking that someone else will hear her, that everyone else will notice me panicking, there are so many thoughts flying around my head and I become aware that I need to get out of there. I stand up abruptly and Jill stops talking, shooting me a shattering glare.

"I uh - I'm sorry...I need to uh" I can't even think of an appropriate lie to tell the table of people staring blankly at me before I dodge my way through random colleagues and run along the corridor.

_I've taken the first turning I found in a hope that I'd end up back on a main road where I could find a phone box. I'm starting to believe I can hear footsteps behind me but it's probably just the echo of my own as I walk into the entrance of a tunnel, and the dark making me paranoid. I'm regretting my earlier decision as this path just seems to be going further into the heart of nowhere. I swear I can hear someone breathing heavily in the near distance but I tell myself it's probably just my mind playing tricks on me._

I burst through the double doors and lean against the cool, dirty yellow wall for a moment as I try to catch my breath, get my mind in check, stop my hands from trembling. The sheer action of breathing is beginning to feel like a hot burning fire in my chest. My restricted medical knowledge tells me I've probably acquired at least a couple of bruised ribs if not a crack or two.

I hear the meeting room door swing open and Jill comes out first, barking orders to the troops.

"Janet" I hear her call, "go and hunt down Sherlock and find out what the hell is going on!"

Crap. I make my way swiftly into the ladies and triple check the door's locked as I shut myself in a cubicle. Being in such a small space really isn't helping me right now, but I definitely wasn't claustraphobic before.

_I get to the end of the tunnel and walk for another few minutes before I find myself at a huge metal gate with a sign stating 'private property'. Being a police officer I figured tonight wasn't the best night to get myself arrested for trespassing so I turn around and check my phone again. Still nothing. I'm seriously starting to worry now. After all, you here stories about people getting lost and being found a week later in some field, frozen to death. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there's a sharp forceful pain in the back of my head and I fall to the floor as my whole body jolts._

I hear the door slam open and close briefly afterwards and Janet's heels click as she creeps in cautiously.

"Rach?" she calls softly. It's blatantly obvious where I am, the toilets are completely empty apart from my cubicle and she probably followed me in. "I know you're in there Rachel, and you're forgetting I have two teenage daughters, I'm good at coaxing stroppy young women out of bathrooms." Hearing her voice in such a light hearted tone calms me down a bit, but I still can't keep my thoughts in one place.

_I come round to the stench of stale alcohol and tobacco smoke. I can barely breathe from the weight on my chest and I realise, when I try to scream, that the weight has its hand pressed down hard over my mouth. It grunts and huffs as it continues about it's violation and I can't help but wonder whether he realises that I've woken up or not. I have no sense of time or space and I can barely see, probably due to the head injury I've obviously sustained. I know there's nothing I can do without getting myself killed in the process, so I just lay still, letting the psychopath continue to heave itself up and down over my paralysed body. My arms and legs feel utterly useless as it seems to have the power to pin everything to the ground with a little finger. This brute is inside me, controlling me, I feel utterly pointless. A failure. I'm a police officer and I can't even fight off this half wit!_

I realise I've been pacing up and down inside this cubicle, my subconcious seems to be trying to decide what to do. I freeze on the spot suddenly and slide down the wall until I'm crowched in a ball as small as possible on the floor.

"Rachel?" she calls again. "Rachel if you don't answer me I'm going to kick this door down!" My heart rate seems to have quickened again but I reach my arm up and flick the latch of the toilet door.

Janet;

Finally I hear the lock click open and swiftly slip into the cubicle, figuring she's not coming out. She's sat on the floor, shivering, her chest is heaving up and down as she panics and her big brown eyes are brimming with tears as she stares back at me.

"Rach mate I need you to calm down for me, come on" I tell her gently as I place my hands round her shoulders. I've no idea what the hell on earth has happened to her but she jumps and flinches away from me. Her face is riddled with pain and there's obviously something physically wrong as well as emotionally. "Just take deep breaths for me Rachel, come on" I talk to her slowly as she continues to hyperventilate. The shell of a woman sat in front of me is definitely not the Rachel I know, something explicitly traumatising has obviously ocurred.

Rachel;

"Rach mate I need you to calm down for me, come on" she puts her hands on my shoulders and I flinch in pain, just sitting like this is killing my ribs. "Just take deep breaths for me Rachel, come on" she reaches her hands out to me and, purely for the want of getting up off of this grubby toilet floor, I clasp my hands tightly around hers as she slowly pulls me up. She pulls me into a hug which is murder on the bruising and grazes on my back but I cling on to her anyway, I'm scared, I don't understand what's happening to me and I don't want to be on my own. I take a deep breath and I tell her everything.

_I assume I blacked out again after a while as I wake up, shivering, but alone. My body aches and throbs all over but I know that I need to get up if I'm going survive this. I roll myself over so I can get up onto my hands and knees, but I scream uncontrollably as a shattering pain ricochets across my diaphram and tears begin to flow freely down my face. With a great amount of effort I heave myself to my feet and grit my teeth as every step is agony._

"I barely remember the rest of it, I vaguely recall being in a taxi and the next thing I knew I was at the office. I couldn't begin to face going home on my own so I showered and got changed here and sat in the toilets until after Jill came in so she didn't suspect anything." I can feel myself babbling on and my eyes are welling with tears again. Janet is staring back at me with a face that can only be described as shock horror. She pulls me back into her warm embrace and I find myself sobbing uncontrollably into her. -

Janet;

I literaly can not quite come to believe what I have just heard. It's like my ears are playing tricks on me. I'd ask her to say it again just to be doubley sure but I haven't got the heart and I don't think she's got the will power. We hear about it every day in out job, it's a completely normal thing that happens to thousands of young girls every year. You never expect it to happen to you though, even less to someone like Rachel. I can't even begin to contemplate what she must be feeling now so I do all I can and wrap by arms tightly around her quivering body again. She's crying and bawling right in front of me and I feel a tear fall from my own eyes. I can't let her see me cry though, I need to be strong for her right now.

After a considerable amount of time I realise she's stopped crying but obviously isn't keen for me to leave. I lift my head and gently step back, holding her at arms length.

"Right" I say "I'm going to take you to the hospital and get you checked out. Then, I'm taking you home and I will stay with you for as long as you need. Ok?" Although I know I need to take charge here and persevere into getting her checked out, I also know that forceing this broken woman in front of me into anything will make everything ten times worse. I know that from this point in time she needs to make all the decisions and she's going to need her friends to support her in doing this. "We will get you through this." I tell her "I promise."

**So, hope you enjoyed this, please R&R, it makes my day! **

**By the way, this is only a one shot but hopefully I'll get some time to write some more stuff, and when they're back on our screens I'll get some more inspiration. **

**By for now, love you all! x **


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